I recently was talking recently with a lady about this very topic- can someone be completely healed of the effects of narcissistic abuse? We both shared the same opinion. With God, of course, all things are possible. However, to be completely healed isn’t necessarily the norm.

For one thing, narcissistic abuse infects every area of your being. The stress of it can affect you physically, such as developing high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney disease, or heart disease. The negativity & crazy making affect you mentally. So many victims feel like they’re crazy. Many lose their self esteem or live with depression & anxiety. A lot of victims live with PTSD or C-PTSD after leaving the relationship with a narcissist. Many people in a relationship with narcissists are affected financially. Narcissists see people as nothing more than tools to be used in whatever way benefits the narcissist, so many victims lose a great deal of money to their narcissist. Many victims are also affected spiritually because of the narcissist’s weird religious beliefs or being overly “religious”, using God to make the victim feel like a bad person, God is punishing them or the like.

For another thing, if you had a narcissistic parent (or two), the abuse is even worse simply due to the nature of the relationship. It goes so deeply against nature for a parent to abuse a child instead of loving & caring for her, that it’s virtually impossible to accept. That can deeply affect a child no matter that child’s age. Many are in denial, saying their narcissistic mother was just quirky or over protective rather than narcissistic. Some believe their covertly narcissistic parent was naive, & didn’t know any better. Or, they believe the covertly narcissistic parent was incapable of stopping the overtly narcissistic parent from abusing them for various reasons.

Also, childhood forms who you are as an adult. Whether you had a good or bad upbringing, you are a product of your childhood. I think childhood is much like the foundation of a home. If a home’s foundation is damaged, the home won’t be safe. If you had a bad childhood, your adulthood won’t be healthy until you fix the damage done to you in childhood.

You may never fully heal from the abuse. It’s quite normal. If you get to the place the abuse doesn’t consume you, you’re doing great. If you can think or talk about certain events without feeling devastated, but instead feeling more like you’re remembering an unpleasant dream, you’re doing great. It’s quite possible you may not be healed more than that. In my personal experience plus observations of the many other victims of narcissistic abuse I’ve spoken with, complete healing isn’t common. In fact, I haven’t seen it myself.

If you are like most of us & still struggling even many years after the abuse happened, please know you’re not alone! Not by a long shot! You also aren’t weak or a failure. God hasn’t abandoned you either. In fact, He is with you during the worst times, whether you feel His presence or not. I’ll close this post with a beautiful reminder of that fact..

Psalm 23

1The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

No one who has been raised in neglect and abuse will ever be the person they would have been if they’d been raised by normal, loving parents. The damage runs too deep. We may go on to live what outsiders see as normal lives but they are anything but normal. We will always struggle, to one degree or another, with disabilities both physical and emotional. Even in good times the toxic shame and sadness is always there in the background tainting everything. And keeping those emotions from breaking out into the open is hard work that never stops. It’s no wonder that so many survivors are constantly exhausted.

Not everyone is able to walk away when they would like to, unfortunately, which is who I aim to help with my writing. However, that aside, I agree with you! Life is to be enjoyed, so enjoy it to the best of your ability! Even if you don’t heal completely, you’ll still experience a new level of joy & that is a wonderful thing! It’s empowering knowing that the narcissist, try as they might, couldn’t destroy you entirely.

I’m only a little over 1 year NC so perhaps things will improve with more time away from my abusers. Unfortunately I live too close to them and it will be some time before I can move away. And they have tried to contact me since I went NC which doesn’t help. I don’t respond to them but it’s still upsetting. I do try to do the things you wrote about in your post, especially laughter (thank God my husband makes me laugh every day) and some other things. But if I’m making any progress it’s very slow. I still contend that no abuse victim will ever be the person they would have been if they’d been raised by good and loving parents. But we can go on to have happy lives if we determine to do that. It just takes lots of time and effort. And that is a process we shouldn’t have to endure because we should never have been abused.

Time apart will definitely help you Suzanne. & slow progress is still progress, so please don’t discount it!

I agree too.. it’s not a process we should have to endure because we shouldn’t have been abused. All we can do is whatever we know helps us heal & trust in God to help us. If we can at least get to the point where thinking about the abuse isn’t devastating,we’re in a good place. Healing more than that is even better- regaining the self esteem that was destroyed, thinking healthy thoughts over the awful gaslighting thoughts, etc.

I developed PTSD from sexual assaults, and I certainly relate to this (to an extent, of course). What I learned in my own recovery is that recovery doesn’t fix what happened to you. Instead, it brings you to a place where your trauma is no longer debilitating; a place where you can live with it; accept it and let go.

I fully recovered from abuse, and absolutely you can too. Anyone can. What I did was I took a step back, looked inside myself, did some deep inner healing work to identify my childhood wounds and really felt into them, accepted what I felt, and let go of those feelings. It’s definitely not easy, but 100% possible for all 🙂

I’m very happy for you and wish you well. I feel I’ve dealt with all the big stuff that I remember so well, but every now and again a long forgotten memory comes to mind that I see in a new light. I then realise that shouldn’t have happened either. And then there are things that you discover years later. Searching for my mother’s birth certificate once, I came across a letter my father had written to me soon after he’d left when I was 7 years old. I had forgotten all about it. I think I’d been allowed to read it once but then it disappeared. I was never allowed to write back to him (the only way I could have got in touch with him all those years ago.) I was really upset to discover I could have had some sort of relationship with him all along.
I have a lovely group of friends and one day I was unable to and meet them. I found myself wondering how to tell them. I immediately realised how ridiculous that was. My friends were not going to get upset or angry that I couldn’t go. That behaviour was simple and instant to resolve, but it made me wonder what else I doing – behaviours that served me well as a child with my mother, but totally unnecessary in healthy friendships. My friends are amazed I’m so sane but I’m still who am I today because of my childhood.

That is so sad, Angela. I’m sorry you weren’t able to have a relationship with your father!

I understand.. I wonder the same thing about myself. What behaviors that served me as a child am I still doing today? It’s hard to separate the healthy & unhealthy sometimes, especially when you grew up with a narcissistic parent.

Wow it seems like you have come a long way! I still sometimes have a small feeling that springs up spontaneously to give him another chance, but like you I immediately realize how ridiculous that is and laugh to myself. I think maybe sometimes I feel like u where I’m almost too nervous? about falling back into old behaviors or not realizing personality traits that I still have from when I was with the Narcissist. Totally understand where ur coming from!

It’s very sad.. I think it’s best if we can hope & pray for it but know it may not happen.. have a balanced, realistic view of healing, if that makes sense. I certainly don’t want to trivialize your healing by any means, so I hope I don’t come across that way! It’s just everyone has a different path to walk so I think everyone needs to know that.

No not at all! Believe me I know my situation was probably not as difficult as many other people. There is hope for anyone suffering is the point I’m trying to make. It’s also why I am on this website to help people any way I possibly can!

Exactly! What makes no sense to anyone who hasn’t dealt with it makes perfect sense to you and I! The moment I discovered I wasn’t the only one dealing with this type of abuse I regained my sanity! Lol

Oh goodness yes!!! We all seem to share some things in common, one of which is thinking it’s just us- no one else has experienced this kind of abuse. When we find out others have experienced it, it’s such a relief! It’s not just me!!! YEA!!! Eventually it’s also a point of sadness that so many others know the pain, but even so, that relief I don’t think goes away entirely.

This is so completely true and only someone who has been abused will ever really understand it. I don’t know that I will ever fully heal from what I went through. Thank you for making me feel like this is okay.

Reblogged this on An adult daughter's struggle to recover from narcissistic parents and commented:
It is so important to remind ourselves, especially those who were raised by 1 or 2 narc parents, that setbacks in our recovery are normal. For those of us who were fortunate enough to have been raised by narc parents (sarcasm intended) & grew up with siblings who chose to join the bullies, we have been brainwashed since the very first moment we began learning about the world, the first moment we learn how to perceive & speak our mother tongue– Let’s not forget languages determines our thoughts. Some might not disagree with me, which is fine, for I’m thinking about the reference to the linguistic theory of relativity in the sci-fi, Arrival.https://mirrornews.hfcc.edu/news/2016/11-28/arrival-delivers-linguistic-theory-sci-fi-package
“According to Sapir-Whorf, the structure of our language itself determines how we think and interact with the world around us. ”

If your mother tongue is English, or you are deeply influenced by Engligh/the western culture, you might very well think of time as a linear concept, and thus as time progresses, you might feel I must make progress as I enter a new stage of my life, as if time moves on, I must moves on, which is actually against our human nature & causes unnecessary self-blame, which we really don’t want to inflict upon ourselves, since self-blame is one of the most common effects caused by our abusers.

Although dwelling on the past or longing for the future can be destructive if carried too far, we need to keep a sense of time moving forward for one reason: hope. As a child living in the war zone that was my family home hope kept me from despair. I was blessed to have a relationship with God very early on and always trusted that, someday, in His time, I’d be freed from the daily abuse and neglect. On many days it was all that kept me going. And even now that I’m strict NC with my abuser and her enablers I still look to the future with hope because that is the heritage of the children of God. This world, no matter how pleasant, is not my home. It’s a temporary place of abode. And the day will come when I move into the house of my Father in heaven where there are no sinners and no one to hurt me. Time is linear; God created it that way. But we were created for a home where time will no longer exist and we’ll live in the eternal present. That’s why we have memory and why we are built to anticipate the future. Sin has corrupted those constructs in us but they remain and they serve us if we let them.

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